


Faking It Official

by pretchatta



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff, Season/Series 01, Tattoos, Team as Family, Undercover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:47:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29654988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pretchatta/pseuds/pretchatta
Summary: The Ghost crew have to pretend to be a family for a mission... but how much of it is actually fake?or, not-actually-fake relationship for the whole crew, with a dash of yearning for airport security queues (yes, that's what lockdown has done to me), featuring my favourite Kanera headcanon.
Relationships: Ezra Bridger & The Ghost Crew, Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla, Space Family (Star Wars Rebels)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	Faking It Official

_"Welcome to Malthau, the galaxy's bastion of traditional family values. Visitors to our planet are reminded that non-family groups are not permitted in any public space. Sentients who have not yet reached the age of maturity for their species must be supervised by their legal guardians at all times, and pets must be kept under suitable restraint. Please have your identity datachips ready for inspection by border control staff and ensure you are proceeding to the correct checkpoint for your planet of origin. We hope you enjoy your stay on Malthau."_

Ezra listened to the overly-sanitised voice repeating the welcome message in a variety of languages other than Basic, none of which he spoke, as he waited for the others to disembark from the shuttle. Though it was his first time on the planet, nothing the announcement said was new to him, thanks to Hera’s thorough briefing on this operation. 

He wasn’t even particularly awed by the bustling spaceport around him. He’d only been on the Ghost for a few months, but he'd gone from never having left Lothal to travelling to a new planet every standard week, and after a while that stopped being quite so exciting. Especially when all the spaceports looked pretty much the same.

He was jolted out of his thoughts by Kanan clapping a hand onto his shoulder.

"Alright, we’re all here; let's get through security."

Sure enough, Hera, Zeb and Sabine were following him, and like himself and Kanan were wearing casual clothes for the operation. They’d been forced to leave their armour and weapons behind on the Ghost, along with Chopper, thanks to Malthau’s laws on security and compulsory droid memory wipes.

The job itself was simple enough, and Ezra found himself running through the details in his head as they followed the markings on the floor directing them to border control. The main objective was to pick up several crates of supplies. Ezra knew neither who they were buying from nor who they were taking it to.; he didn’t even know what it was they were delivering, but he had very quickly learned not to ask Hera for information she didn’t want to give. 

The hows of their plan were the part that made him a little nervous. Because of Malthau’s strict rules, there was a fair amount of deception involved in what should have been a simple pick-up. The four of them had come in on a civilian transport posing as a family of tourists, and had been careful to assume the roles that Thaulans accepted as "traditional". They had all the files to prove it on a datachip: proof of identity for each of them, a marriage certificate for Kanan and Hera and a whole sub-folder of adoption documents for him, Zeb and Sabine.

All were forged, of course, using a technique Sabine had learnt on illegal HoloNet forums. She’d tried to explain it to him, but hadn’t got much further than "mocking the data transfer protocol authentication" before he found himself unable to keep up. He _had_ understood the part where Zeb's false identity proclaimed him to belong to a race of beings that matured very slowly, however, which simultaneously got around the part where he was more than ten standard years older than his "parents" as well as the fact that there was exactly one known Lasat in the galaxy, who was wanted by the Empire for insurgent activities.

Now, Ezra was no stranger to lying and deceiving to get what he wanted -- he had survived on the streets by himself for seven years, after all -- but the security on Malthau was tighter than a loth-wolf's jaws. To get to their pick-up point, they would have to pass right through it, with no distractions or sneaking around the back. He tried to comfort himself with the fact that at least it wasn’t Imperial security they were up against for once; the Thaulans had submitted so readily to the Empire that they hadn’t even been sent any stormtroopers, just a governor and a few officers. 

They reached the line of people who had come in on the same shuttle as they had waiting their turn for inspection. At the other end, only two of the twelve desks were manned by Thaulan security agents, but both were manned by an officer and several burly guards. Ezra watched them waving people forward nervously.

"Must be a quiet period," Hera mused. "I hope this doesn’t take too long."

"We’ve got five hours until our return flight leaves, there’s no reason to worry about time." Kanan was a beacon of calm, both in his voice and in the Force, and Ezra tried to focus on that.

Hera sighed. "I know, I’d just rather get this over with. I don’t like-"

Kanan interrupted her, holding up his hand to make a list on his fingers. "You don’t like flying in a ship that you personally aren’t piloting, you don’t like leaving the Ghost behind even for only a day, you don’t like paperwork and seemingly pointless bureaucracy, you don’t like discriminatory tourism policies -- I know, Hera."

He put an arm around her and gave her a gentle squeeze. She leaned into the contact.

"But you also don’t like not getting paid," he continued, "so stop thinking about the things you can’t control, and let’s all just focus on getting to our pick-up point."

She gave him a small smile and did seem a little more relaxed as she pulled away from him. In contrast, Ezra found his anxiety growing as the line moved forward in front of them.

"Stop fidgeting," Sabine hissed as they neared the desk. He made a conscious effort to still himself, having been shifting his weight from foot to foot, but the energy only transferred to his hands which started twisting in the hem of his jacket.

The people in front of them were waved through, and now the four of them were at the front of the line. They had an unobstructed view of the checkpoint, where the Thaulan behind the desk was looking between her screen and the couple waiting to be approved. After a few moments, she withdrew their datachip from her terminal and passed it back to the security guard behind her, who inserted it into an overly large astromech droid.

"What’s that?" Ezra asked before he could stop himself.

"That," replied a nearby security guard, "is one of the new forgery detection droids." He had the air of someone showing off a fancy new toy to a child. "It’s got a state-of-the-art algorithm for detecting falsified documents, especially ones which mock the data transfer protocol authentication. There’s been a recent rise in those, thanks to several criminal forums on the HoloNet, but you can be sure no-one’s getting planetside illegally with this beauty standing in their way."

Ezra gulped. There was no _way_ they’d make it through this checkpoint undetected.

"And you pass all our documents through it?"

"Oh, no, not all of them," the guard assured him. "Current procedure is just the marriage certificates. It’s not a particularly fast algorithm so it’d take too long to process everything, but criminals are usually adults pretending to be in polyamorous marriages. I mean, a kid like you isn’t going to be smuggling anything, right?" He laughed to himself.

"Yeah. Right." Ezra tried to laugh with him, but it sounded fake even to his ears.

"'Specially not a kid as annoying as you," Zeb rumbled, planting one of his huge hands on Ezra's head and ruffling his hair -- a little harder than necessary. "Sorry about my _little_ brother, he asks a lot of _questions_ when he should just _keep his mouth shut_."

Ezra squirmed out of Zeb's grip and glared at him; the Lasat only glared right back. The guard chuckled and turned away from them, as though he saw such scenes every day.

He knew the marriage document was all it would take to expose them -- or at the very least, stop them from getting planetside. He tried to catch someone else's eye, but Sabine only rolled her eyes at him, and neither Hera nor Kanan were even looking.

 _Keep cool, they’ve probably got an escape plan for when this goes south, I just need to stay alert_.

The droid beeped, spat the datachip out of its port and chirped something that sounded positive in binary. A few moments later the couple in front were waved through the checkpoint, and then it was their turn. 

The Thaulan officer behind the desk beckoned them forwards, and Hera passed her their datachip with all their forged documents as they reached the designated waiting area. As she had done for every group before them, the officer looked through their details on her own terminal for a few moments, her eyes flicking up to each of their faces as she checked their identities. Then, she disconnected the chip and passed it behind her to the guard who stood beside the droid. 

Ezra held his breath while they waited for the results. Finally, after what seemed like an age, the droid beeped. He got ready to reach for the Force-

"All clear." The guard’s Basic was accented, but that was undoubtedly what he said. Ezra tried not to sag too noticeably with relief.

The chip was passed back to the officer, who was about to return it to Hera when she stopped herself. 

"Oh, hold on -- interspecies marriages have some new additional checks. Since your children cannot be unsupervised, please could the five of you follow my colleague here to the security offices?" She gestured and one of the guards stepped forwards.

Ezra’s anxiety shot back up.

 _This is it. This is gonna be where we’re found out_.

"What kind of additional check?" Hera was saying.

"The new policy is to ask for proof of merging of two cultures, such as photos or holovids of joint cultural events, traditions or other. However, as these rules did not come into effect until after the 60-rotation preparation period ahead of your trip, you are excused from having such evidence, but will be subject to questioning."

Hera pulled a face. "If we have holos from our wedding with us, can we just show you now?"

"Of course," the Thaulan officer replied. 

"Here, I've got some on my datapad in the bag-"

Hera reached for the fastening of her hand luggage, but Kanan’s hand on her arm stopped her.

"It’s alright, Hera, I've got this."

Hera tried to protest as he reached for the hem of his shirt. "Kanan, no, that’s really not necessary-"

Too late; in one fluid movement, he took the hem of his long-sleeved shirt and pulled it over his head. After tugging his arms out, Kanan was standing completely shirtless in the middle of the busy spaceport. Hera was sighing and rolling her eyes at him, but Ezra wasn’t paying her much attention.

He realised he’d never actually seen Kanan without a shirt until now. His torso was covered in myriad scars and what looked like old blaster burns, mostly healed but some still very much visible. That wasn't what was drawing Ezra's eyes though. His lightly muscled arms were covered in gracefully curving white lines: tattoos.

It took Ezra a moment to realise that they looked a lot like the markings Hera had on her lekku. He had no idea when Kanan had found the time to draw fake tattoos on himself; maybe Sabine did it for him, with some of her paint. That seemed most likely.

"Traditional twi’leki tattoos; I took on the markings of my wife’s clan when I married her, as is custom on Ryloth," he proclaimed to his audience. "Usually they go on the lekku, but since I don’t have any, she was kind enough to accept them on my arms instead."

The security guards examined the tattoos, and then Hera’s lekku. For the first time since he joined the crew, Ezra saw embarrassment on his captain’s face. Kanan, meanwhile, wore a big grin and was almost preening himself under their gaze. Ezra understood why; it must have taken a lot of effort to paint them on, and it would have been wasted if he hadn't had the chance to show them off now. He supposed Hera wasn't such a fan of the attention.

After a few moments the guards nodded at the markings and at each other, and then waved them all through. Ezra almost couldn’t believe it; they’d made it! He should really stop being so surprised when his crew managed to pull back from a seemingly inescapable situation at the last moment, since they did it so often. When he thought about it logically, Kanan might have done a Jedi thing on the droid, and probably had some kind of Force warning about the extra checks.

Ezra managed to contain his questions until they were safely in the bustling street beyond the spaceport.

"How did you know you’d need the tattoos?" he burst out. "We didn’t discuss that in the briefing."

"What?" Kanan -- now fully clothed again -- seemed baffled by the question.

"They’re really good," he continued. "Did Sabine paint them for you? How long until they come off? Is it a special paint?"

It was Sabine’s turn to look nonplussed by his incessant questions. "Uh..."

"And how did you get the marriage certificate to fool that droid?"

"I didn’t do his tattoos, and what do you mean ‘fool the droid’?" she replied slowly.

"I thought all our documents were mocking that -- that protocol thing." He screwed up his face trying to remember the words she’d used, but the technical jargon evaded him. 

Sabine nodded. "The forged documents were all exploiting a vulnerability in the data transfer protocol authentication, yeah."

"But the guard said the algorithm was made to specifically check that. So how’d the marriage certificate get through? Did you add something extra to it?"

Sabine clapped a hand over her forehead.

"Ezra, are you really that dense?"

"What?"

"He really is, Sabine," Zeb noted.

"Only the proof of identity and adoption files were fake. The marriage certificate is real."

Ezra’s face remained a picture of confusion for all of two seconds before the facts sunk in.

"Wait... You guys actually got married?" The looks on all four of their faces -- like it was the most obvious thing in the galaxy -- answered his question for him. He took a moment to absorb this new information.

"Just for this op? Seriously?"

Zeb started laughing, and even though he tried to control himself, Kanan did too.

"Ezra." Hera took him by the shoulders with a serious expression on her face, ignoring the laughter. "Kanan and I got married two years ago. Because we love each other."

Ezra was too stunned to respond.

"It’s why we were recommended for this mission; the less we have to fake, the better," she continued patiently. "And Kanan’s tattoos are real; they were done by an artist from a twi’lek colony on Alderaan."

"You seriously didn’t know?" Sabine asked incredulously.

Now that he thought about it, it _did_ make a lot of sense. Kanan and Hera always acted like... Well, like how his parents used to act around each other.

Kanan finally stopped laughing. "Zeb can tell you the story when we’re back on the Ghost, Ezra. In the meantime, we need to get to this warehouse, so let's get moving."

The team started walking, following their leader, and Zeb clapped a hand on Ezra's back.

"Ah, kid. You do know how to make these operations amusing," he chuckled. "Next you'll be asking if those adoption forms are real."


End file.
